Silence broken on suicides - South Bergen area families reflect

By Jaimie Julia Winters

Editor |

South Bergenite

On July 8, 45-year-old Christopher J. Moje of Lyndhurst parked his car on the shoulder of Route 3 East, crouched behind the car and then leapt in front of an oncoming tractor-trailer in a suicide attempt which proved successful. Police said he had attempted suicide unsuccessfully in a similar manner in June on the NJ Turnpike. Moje's wife had passed away in February, and he left behind two young children.

After a man jumped in front of a tractor trailer rig last week on Route 3, others left to deal with loved ones lost to suicide speak out.

A year ago on July 15, 2013, 44-year-old Shaun Campbell of East Rutherford jumped in front of a train at the Rutherford train station after years battling mental health issues and run-ins with the law. Last year, suicide by train saw its highest number in New Jersey at 25. Campbell left behind two sons, a mother, girlfriend and many friends.

Just two days after Shaun's suicide, Jay Fahy, a prominent lawyer, former prosecutor and Carlstadt's borough attorney left his Rutherford home on Ridge Road and walked to Route 17 and shot himself under the railroad bridge near Castle Billiards in East Rutherford. Two teens found his body during rush hour. He left a wife and a mother and a close-knit group of colleagues who struggled to understand why Fahy would take his own life.

On Sept. 4, 2013, Rutherford resident Rosemary Loar received a call that her brother Vincent Loar took his own life by shotgun on the off ramp of a Pennsylvania highway. He was a cross-country trucker, his dream job, and had lost the job after hitting a guardrail. After floating from job to job and winding up in the mail room at Amazon and then losing that job, he became homeless. Vincent Loar left behind a close knit family of a brother and five sisters.

Although the four men couldn't have been more different from each other, they were similar in their choice to end their lives so violently. All four left behind families who loved and supported them through their trials and tribulations and who had to deal with the aftermath of suicide and the question of "why."

All four deaths also left marks on the last people to see them - the train conductor in Campbell's case, the tractor trailer driver who hit Moje, the police who found Loar and the two teens who discovered Fahy.

In 2009, suicide was ranked as the 10th leading cause of death among those 10 years old and above, accounting for 36,891 deaths, according to the most recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Men are four times as likely to choose to commit suicide as opposed to women. Men are more likely to choose a violent death such as those involving a gun while most women choose poison or a lethal overdose. Because of this, more men are successful at suicides than women are. Guns and trains translate to immediate death, while toxins take a while to kill.

Risk factors include abuse as a child, mental disorders, alcohol and or drug abuse, recent loss of a relationship, finances or job and physical illness.

Barriers to mental health treatment, easy access to guns, drugs or lethal methods, stigma attached to mental illness treatment and local epidemic of suicides causing copycats can cause a rise in suicide rates.

According to the National Violent Death Reporting System, the top reason precipitating suicide death is intimate partner problems (more so with men than women), second is health problems (more so with women than men) and third is financial or job-related problems. More than 30 percent reported suicidal thoughts to someone prior to their deaths, and 20 percent had attempted suicide before.

Moje had just lost his wife. Reports after Fahy's death describe trouble with his law practice prior to his death. Vincent Loar had lost the only job he had ever known, which was his identity, and he also had battled with mental illness. With Shaun Campbell, it was years of struggling with mental illness and the lack of professional and judicial help that led to him jumping in front of a train.

Shaun's story

Sean Campbell said his father Shaun had struggled with mental illness, had used alcohol to self-medicate, been suicidal at times and that his father had told him that train by suicide was how he would do it.

"He was seeking peace and couldn't seem to find it - that is the bigger picture. Was I surprised? No. At first I thought it's not him, my dad will live forever. But I was kind of relieved for him when I heard," said Sean, who is now a mental health advocate.

Shaun ran a lucrative business, made a three-figure salary, bought a $500,000 house, was Vice President of the Little League, extremely popular, had the gift of gab and was a risk-taker. He was also diagnosed with bipolar, and he wouldn't take his meds, and there was always the alcohol, said Sean.

"It was complex. There's a difference between the disease and his interaction with people and he was more than functioning. People loved him, even the police he had run-ins with, he was a good provider and good father," said Sean.

It was in 2004, when Sean was 14-years old, that Shaun went to rehab the first time.

Shaun would go back four times. Some were clinical places and some were high-end swanky places, but Sean says he would be drinking again within the year after the rehab. He would have 30-day stints of sobriety and at one point in 2012 wanting to stop drinking so badly he went as far as to take Antabuse, which makes you vomit if you drink. Sean believes that no matter how hard he tried to battle the alcoholism, he was not being treated for the bipolar disorder and that's where the problem lay.

"The family didn't address the bipolar, nor did he. In later years my father told me he had taken medication once in the mid-2000s but that it made him feel low energy. The idea in both the family's mind and Shaun's was always to minimize his stress. He moved out of town where people knew him and even near water where he would fish and decompress," said Sean.

Over the years Shaun would got 13 DWIs and 78 motor vehicle violations before serving time, having his license taken away, and was never required to seek psychological help. His MO would be to flee the scene of the offense to avoid a breathalyzer test.

"Not being held accountable enabled his mania. He then discovered if he ran from the scene he could escape a breathalyzer, and it enabled his mania more because he was getting away with it," said Sean.

Then on the evening of April 24, 2009 in Morris Township, 48-year-old Harold Bivins and his four-year-old daughter were passing through an intersection when Shaun, driving with a suspended license, crashed his Ford Bronco head-on into them while drunk.

Sean says it hit his father hard that there was a little girl in the car.

After serving two years, where he read and was a model prisoner, he was released with the condition he could never obtain a license again. In the prison system, Shaun was not treated for bipolar disorder. He told Sean that prisoners with a mental health issue wear a different-colored jump suit, and are looked at differently and get fewer freedoms. Prison was hard enough, he said.

He was working again in construction three days out of prison. After Sandy hit, Shaun was working in tree removal in Connecticut where he would commute by train. One day he decided to take the keys to a worker's car instead of getting a ride to the train. He was pulled over and charged with DWI and driving without a license. Shaun went to jail for 10 days because he didn't have the bail. His court date was still pending when he jumped in front of the train last July.

Vincent's story

Vincent's job was hard and lonely, but he bravely maneuvered his big rig through treacherous dark roads from East Coast to West Coast for JP Hunt, said his sister Rosemary Loar.

"His job wasn't for most people, but he loved it, the open road, it was his identity," Rosemary said.

He also made a good living at it and was generous to a fault. Then one night his truck slipped on black ice. He hit a guard rail, and his job and his career ended.

Vincent had fought depression for years, battled with a bad relationship with his father, but losing the job, his pay and his identity took a toll on him emotionally. He found a job as a truck jockey and lost that after backing into another vehicle.

After another job loss in the Amazon mailroom, he stopped taking his medication and stopped therapy due to finances, and began distancing himself from his brother and sisters. After his roommate passed away, he wound up living in his SUV.

"He had attempted suicide before by jumping in front of a truck on the NJ Turnpike. So, when he withdrew, we were all calling him trying to keep in touch and he did for awhile. But we didn't know he was living in his SUV," said Loar.

At one point Vincent told a family member that he bought a gun but threw it away.

"He was that afraid to kill himself, but in the end he did it because he was in that much pain. His soul and spirit were broken and he just couldn't let go of the past with our father and job loss," said Loar. "While all of us have experienced the pain of loss and got through it, he just couldn't let go of it."

When Vincent bought the other gun no one knows for sure.

The day before Vincent shot himself his brother Danny, a lobbyist with the Baton Rouge Archdiocese, was at the Baton Rouge Assembly testifying for mandatory psychological and criminal background checks for gun purchases.

Vincent did leave a note. "I can't do this anymore. I am sorry for hurting you all."

The innocents

Life is hell for the conductors following a suicide.

"Once I apply the emergency break that's all I can do. You blow the horn and wish you could step away. Then you hear that sickening thump and know that someone's life has just ended," said Tim Haas, NJ Transit conductor.

In a letter to the editor written just a day after Shaun Campbell's death by a train, his mother, Trish, thought about the conductor's pain. "While you're at prayer, please, as a favor to me and to Shaun, will you just say a special prayer for the innocent man who drove the train and had no thought of hurting anyone. My heart also aches for him; I know he never meant to harm anyone," she wrote.

In response to the uptick in suicides by train last year and following Shaun's death, NJ Transit set up signs along the tracks with a suicide hotline number in late 2013.

Mental health professionals believe these signs can be a life line to suicidal people.

"While standing on the platform, I noticed a sign from the New Jersey Hopeline that read, 'You're Not Alone. Feeling Desperate, Depressed, or Suicidal? Call Us 855-654-6735,'" said Jerry Reed of the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. "Many feel that there is no one who will understand their struggle - not a family member, friend, teacher, trusted colleague, or professional. We need to reach these individuals and let them know that - at what might be the loneliest moment in their lives - they can pick up the telephone and call 1-800-273-TALK or their local crisis line, and have a conversation with someone who will listen and help. We need to be vigilant and present in locations where individuals are at risk."

On July 8, 45-year-old Christopher J. Moje of Lyndhurst parked his car on the shoulder of Route 3 East, crouched behind the car and then leapt in front of an oncoming tractor-trailer in a suicide attempt which proved successful. Police said he had attempted suicide unsuccessfully in a similar manner in June on the NJ Turnpike. Moje's wife had passed away in February, and he left behind two young children.

A year ago on July 15, 2013, 44-year-old Shaun Campbell of East Rutherford jumped in front of a train at the Rutherford train station after years battling mental health issues and run-ins with the law. Last year, suicide by train saw its highest number in New Jersey at 25. Campbell left behind two sons, a mother, girlfriend and many friends.

Just two days after Shaun's suicide, Jay Fahy, a prominent lawyer, former prosecutor and Carlstadt's borough attorney left his Rutherford home on Ridge Road and walked to Route 17 and shot himself under the railroad bridge near Castle Billiards in East Rutherford. Two teens found his body during rush hour. He left a wife and a mother and a close-knit group of colleagues who struggled to understand why Fahy would take his own life.

On Sept. 4, 2013, Rutherford resident Rosemary Loar received a call that her brother Vincent Loar took his own life by shotgun on the off ramp of a Pennsylvania highway. He was a cross-country trucker, his dream job, and had lost the job after hitting a guardrail. After floating from job to job and winding up in the mail room at Amazon and then losing that job, he became homeless. Vincent Loar left behind a close knit family of a brother and five sisters.

Although the four men couldn't have been more different from each other, they were similar in their choice to end their lives so violently. All four left behind families who loved and supported them through their trials and tribulations and who had to deal with the aftermath of suicide and the question of "why."

All four deaths also left marks on the last people to see them - the train conductor in Campbell's case, the tractor trailer driver who hit Moje, the police who found Loar and the two teens who discovered Fahy.

In 2009, suicide was ranked as the 10th leading cause of death among those 10 years old and above, accounting for 36,891 deaths, according to the most recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Men are four times as likely to choose to commit suicide as opposed to women. Men are more likely to choose a violent death such as those involving a gun while most women choose poison or a lethal overdose. Because of this, more men are successful at suicides than women are. Guns and trains translate to immediate death, while toxins take a while to kill.

Risk factors include abuse as a child, mental disorders, alcohol and or drug abuse, recent loss of a relationship, finances or job and physical illness.

Barriers to mental health treatment, easy access to guns, drugs or lethal methods, stigma attached to mental illness treatment and local epidemic of suicides causing copycats can cause a rise in suicide rates.

According to the National Violent Death Reporting System, the top reason precipitating suicide death is intimate partner problems (more so with men than women), second is health problems (more so with women than men) and third is financial or job-related problems. More than 30 percent reported suicidal thoughts to someone prior to their deaths, and 20 percent had attempted suicide before.

Moje had just lost his wife. Reports after Fahy's death describe trouble with his law practice prior to his death. Vincent Loar had lost the only job he had ever known, which was his identity, and he also had battled with mental illness. With Shaun Campbell, it was years of struggling with mental illness and the lack of professional and judicial help that led to him jumping in front of a train.

Shaun's story

Sean Campbell said his father Shaun had struggled with mental illness, had used alcohol to self-medicate, been suicidal at times and that his father had told him that train by suicide was how he would do it.

"He was seeking peace and couldn't seem to find it - that is the bigger picture. Was I surprised? No. At first I thought it's not him, my dad will live forever. But I was kind of relieved for him when I heard," said Sean, who is now a mental health advocate.

Shaun ran a lucrative business, made a three-figure salary, bought a $500,000 house, was Vice President of the Little League, extremely popular, had the gift of gab and was a risk-taker. He was also diagnosed with bipolar, and he wouldn't take his meds, and there was always the alcohol, said Sean.

"It was complex. There's a difference between the disease and his interaction with people and he was more than functioning. People loved him, even the police he had run-ins with, he was a good provider and good father," said Sean.

It was in 2004, when Sean was 14-years old, that Shaun went to rehab the first time.

Shaun would go back four times. Some were clinical places and some were high-end swanky places, but Sean says he would be drinking again within the year after the rehab. He would have 30-day stints of sobriety and at one point in 2012 wanting to stop drinking so badly he went as far as to take Antabuse, which makes you vomit if you drink. Sean believes that no matter how hard he tried to battle the alcoholism, he was not being treated for the bipolar disorder and that's where the problem lay.

"The family didn't address the bipolar, nor did he. In later years my father told me he had taken medication once in the mid-2000s but that it made him feel low energy. The idea in both the family's mind and Shaun's was always to minimize his stress. He moved out of town where people knew him and even near water where he would fish and decompress," said Sean.

Over the years Shaun would got 13 DWIs and 78 motor vehicle violations before serving time, having his license taken away, and was never required to seek psychological help. His MO would be to flee the scene of the offense to avoid a breathalyzer test.

"Not being held accountable enabled his mania. He then discovered if he ran from the scene he could escape a breathalyzer, and it enabled his mania more because he was getting away with it," said Sean.